Saturday, 25 July 2015

Basement space update

15mm copper pipework going into the shower/toilet/washroom before the walls are boarded up. The Breezeblocks have arrived, these will be used to provide a solid foundation for the shower base to sit on, while also raising the shower base enough to allow room for the waste pipe plumbing underneath.

Mike and Jeff inspecting the pipework inside the framework of the shower room.

The meetings take place on the floor above while the basement is being refurbished.

Arthur is still trying to improve the performance/balance of his robot, and spent the morning talking with Martin about how to clean up noisy signals using filters.

Ricky browsed catalogues of computer parts with the intention of building the ultimate gaming computer.

Les was working on a Raspberry pi project /game which involves barcode scanning.

Jeff is still considering what to do about the system used to maintain his Blackpool Rugby club supporters site.

Both Joomla and Blogger have been looked at as possible replacements for the existing system, but no decision yet.

Wednesday, 15 July 2015

Basement space update.

Mike and Arthur stood in the area which will become the toilet/shower/washroom, the framework for the walls already in place.

Various projects ongoing in the temporary space (Mikes dining room)

Arthur has started using the Raspberry Pi for one of his robot projects

and wants precise motor (real-time?) control for the walking motion, but the Raspberry Pi does not
support real time operations when it is running raspbian.
Arthur has found a pseudo real-time library that may do the job and will report back about this in due course.
Doing a Google search for Raspberry Pi rtos brings up multiple
hits and possibly one of these would be of use.

RISC OS can be installed to the Raspberry Pi

and RISC OS can exert full control over the Raspberry Pi and do real time
operations.
So yet another possibility, although Arthur has said he is not keen on learning more programming languages and operating systems.

I looked at windows 10 on the raspberry pi. The documentation is clear and easy to follow. getting started guide
You need windows 10 installed on a computer, not a virtual machine, to get windows 10 onto the pi.

New pi to run windows 10In a post on the Raspberry Pi blog, Upton writes that the Raspberry Pi 2 will be compatible with Windows 10BUT:- "it's windows Jim, but not as we know it"There seem to be quite a few disappointed people who were expecting a full desktop version of windows 10.

Sunday, 5 July 2015

Basement Space update

One Half of the flooring is done.

Next job is to baton and board the walls.

Mike and Olly discussed the layout of the network cables.

James generated a fair amount of traffic on the mailing list by asking for help reseating the heat sink on his overheating Dell i7 laptop. The opportunity to dismantle this machine was enthusiastically accepted, and even brought Olly out of retirement.

Unfortunately, on the day, James did not appear. He needed to hack on his car which had failed to start.

Consolation picture: The cooling system of my Dell laptop.

Les had picked up a nodemcu http://nodemcu.com/index_en.html at Liverpool Makefest last weekend. This is an ESP8266 based board, and Les soon had a flashing LED using the Lua programming language.

This board makes using the ESP8266 so much easier than a bare 8266. No messing with voltage regulators, rx/tx pins, voltage dividers etc. Just plug your USB cable in and you are ready to start using the ESP8266.

LUA is not the only option, nodemcu is supported in the arduino IDE

Jeff had made a start using Google Blogspot Blogger for his rugby site, but is still interested in learning more about Joomla.

Wednesday, 1 July 2015

Basement Space Update.

The flooring has tongue and groove fittings down the sides and along the ends. All the edge joins are being glued as the floor goes down.

This is the ESP8266 project produced by Arthur

The ESP8266 is programmed to provide a Pirates Vs Ninjas open wireless network. You connect with your phone or Laptop, and are presented with a basic web page with two buttons which you can click on to vote Pirate or Ninja.

When people start voting, a servo moves the pointer to indicate which is more popular, Pirates or Ninjas.

Arthur takes this along to various events.

James, was the first of our group to notice the ESP8266 when it started it's rise to fame. Initially, I think some people, myself included, did not appreciate the power and capabilities of this device. The ESP8266 now has many fans, and it is one of the boards already supported by the new Arduino IDE, meaning that if you are familiar with the Arduino, you can easily get started with the ESP8266.